Across a Nightingale Floor

At writer's group this week, we were discussing possible 5th Teusday writing challanges and one person suggested writing from an object's point of view, instead of a character's (usually a human or animal).  There were other suggestions, but I think I like this one the best.  I already have an idea for it!  Having learned about nightengale floors or uguisubari from reading Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor I have been researching them to use in my own novel The Hogoshiro Chronicles. There's a character named Dr. Takahashi who I think would be paranoid enough to have an uguisubari. 

Uguisubari will usually sing when walked on.  The nails rub against a clamp causing the floor to make chirping sounds.  Kinda cool, isn't?  No one would be able to kill you, if they couldn't get across your uguisubari without making it sing, thus altering you to their pressence.  This was the main reason the Japanese invented uguisubari in the first place; to protect their royals from assassination.

Now, would it not be cool to have a piece of flash finction about someone, say Dr. Takahashi strolling across his uguisubari, but from the floor's point of view?  Maybe it's just me, but I think so.  How would the floor feel about being walked on, if it had any feelings at all?  Guilty over protecting such a cruel man who happens to sell innocent kitsune on the black market or happy to serve it's master?  If someone figured out how to creep across undetected, would uguisubari notice, even if it said nothing?  Would it be able to differentiate the people by their tread?

I hope to answer these questions whether this challange gets chosen or not at some point.  I think it would be a fun challange and a way to force myself to make the landscape come alive.

Sayonara